United Kingdom and Australia join forces to build submarines
Photo: United Kingdom will build more than ten submarines (Getty Images)
Australia and the United Kingdom will hold talks in Sydney to discuss building nuclear-powered submarines, Bloomberg reports.
The annual meeting on Friday, 25 July, is part of the Australia-UK Ministerial Consultations (AUKMIN).
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong will host British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Defense Minister John Healey. They will hold a press conference at Admiralty House on Sydney's waterfront after the talks.
The Foreign Office said in a statement that the deal is expected to generate up to £20 billion in export earnings for the country over the next 25 years.
The deal will see the UK build up to twelve attack submarines, which will be operated jointly by the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy under the SSN-Aukus programme, according to The Times of London.
The deal is part of an effort to persuade the US to stay in the AUKUS pact, which Washington is currently reviewing after the change of the Biden administration.
The UK Foreign Office said that more than 21,000 people will be working in the UK at the height of the AUKUS submarine construction program, which will have conventional weapons but a nuclear power plant.
"This historic Treaty confirms our AUKUS commitment for the next half century," John Healey said.
AUKUS trilateral defense pact
Under the agreement signed in 2021, the US and the UK agreed to help Australia acquire a fleet of nuclear submarines to strengthen Canberra’s defense capabilities amid growing strategic competition with China in the Indo-Pacific region.
In the first phase, Washington is to sell Australia a batch of Virginia-class submarines. The first are due to arrive in the early 2030s.
Later, the UK and Australia will jointly develop and build a new model of nuclear submarines called the SSN-Aukus, the first of which is due to be ready in the early 2040s.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has begun a review of the pact as the Trump administration seeks to shift more responsibility to allies and ensure the sufficiency of the US’s fleet of warships. The review aims to ensure that allies contribute more to collective security and that America’s defence-industrial base can meet domestic needs.
The AUKMIN 2025 meeting aims to discuss new challenges and identify shared priorities, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, Marles and Wong said in a joint statement.
On Sunday, the defense and foreign ministers of Australia and the United Kingdom will visit the northern city of Darwin to observe the deployment of a British aircraft carrier strike group as part of the Talisman Sabre 2025 exercise.
In mid-June, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed hope that the United States would not abandon the nuclear submarine project with Britain and Australia.
